I’m pleased to say that Hunting the Dark, Moth’s second full-length adventure, is finally available as an ebook:

You’ll be able to find it in most countries, but I’m sorry to say that I might have misunderstood the situation re. North America. At the moment, it’s looking like Hunting the Dark is NOT available in the US. However, I’m not giving up hope and will be looking into it as soon as offices open again for business next week. I was under the impression that it would at least be available through Amazon (like Falling to Ash is), but so far it’s not listed. I tend to forget that Falling to Ash was originally only sold to the UK, with an international (inc. US) edition made available much later on – in early 2014. Of course, all of this is out of my hands but I’ll do what I can to clarify. I’m sorry for any disappointment caused to readers in North America. I know you guys love Moth, too!

More news as I have it, but for now I hope those who can get the book enjoy the many scrapes Moth gets into! 🙂

As I said last week, I’m going to devote the last few Mondays before the release of HUNTING THE DARK to blog posts about All Things Moth. Because, after waiting more than two years since FALLING TO ASH, it’s nice to finally be talking about my girl again. 🙂

Something I get asked a lot is: Kaz, why did you choose to set Falling to Ash in Boston when you are, in fact, English and based in the UK?

The straightforward answer is kind of boring. It’s just that I love Boston and couldn’t not set Moth’s adventures there. Marie O’Neal (as Moth was born) is a girl from an Irish-Catholic family (hey, like me!), so it seemed like Boston would be a good place to choose if I wanted to write something set in the US. Which I did. You probably noticed that The Iron Witch books are also set in Massachusetts – I might have made up the large town of Ironbridge, but it is loosely based on a combination of Boston and London. Or at least on the parts that I know.

The first time I went to Boston was in the Fall of 2002. My mum and I had a brilliant holiday together, and we both just fell in love with the city. Everything about it was magical. And, yes, I know that sounds totally whimsical and (maybe even) a little over the top, but I can’t help myself. I have plenty of American friends who say how much they’d love to live in London, and I look at them like they are a bit strange. Probably there are plenty of Bostonians who’d think the same about me for loving their city quite as much as I do. But… there you have it. Something about the place just spoke to me. We went again of course. That time was during the winter so we saw Boston under more snow than I’ve ever seen in my life! It was just as beautiful – if cold – and showed us another side of the city.

Here’s part of a scene/flashback that appears in HUNTING THE DARK. The setting is a secret spot that I sat in myself, 12 years ago, and I just knew that this had to be where Moth first met Theo…

Sitting by the Charles River (2002)

Excerpt from Hunting the Dark:

Theo didn’t seem to be in a hurry to talk about much of anything at all.

His eyes gleamed silver in the half-light, and I watched him as I thought of the very first night we met. I picked at the memory like a scab, afraid that if I let it heal it might fade forever and not even leave a scar.

Some memories are both painful and necessary.

I am sitting in my favorite spot along the Charles River, watching the sailboats and a lone canoe heading back to harbor. The air is still and the sunset perfect. My sketchpad lies beside me on the slatted bench. I came out here to escape, but I don’t feel like drawing right now. All I can think about is Mom and the news we got from her oncologist – yet more bad news.

I become peripherally aware of someone sitting at the other end of my bench. Joining me, but giving me the illusion of space. I stiffen, refusing to turn my head to see who has disturbed my peace.

‘May I?’ A low voice, smooth and filled with warmth.

I look at my uninvited guest, wishing I had the right to ask him to leave. His hand is resting on the closed cover of my sketchpad, and his face is tilted in question as he regards me curiously. I realize that he is asking about my drawings rather than whether or not I mind him joining me.

Holy crap, I think. Holy crap, he looks like an angel. Or maybe more like a devil, with hair as dark as mine and a black suit that seems to flow with every movement of his lithe body. I have never seen anyone who looks quite like this. He could be a model, a movie star . . . or something else entirely.

* * *

Next week I probably won’t manage a #MothMonday post, but I’ll be back on Monday 29th December with the third of this mini-series – see you then, if you’re looking for a little distraction between Christmas and New Year. 😉

I thought it would be fun to share some of the chapter titles for the novel.

Book One, Falling to Ash, didn’t actually have chapter headings, but for some reason this second book just seemed to ‘want’ them. Or need them. I don’t know… I try not to get too ‘magical thinking’ about the writing process, but there’s no denying that some things just happen and I have no idea why. In this case, chapter headings just… happened. As Hunting the Dark is the very first book I’ve ever written that even has chapter titles… you can check them out below! (With a few redacted for possible spoilers, but out of context like this they are mostly non-spoilery until we get towards the end.)

The most frequently asked question I get about the new book is to do with its availability. Yes, as explained in this blog post here it will only be released as an ebook, but the good news is that you shouldn’t have too much trouble buying it – depending on where you live. I checked with my publisher re. which countries Hunting the Dark will be available in – and in what ebook formats – and really it turns out that it is most of them. The answer I got (along with a huge list of all kinds of retailers and distributors that I’d never even heard of) was something along the lines of:

It will be available through near enough all major ebook retailers across the world, barring North America.

I’d suggest just checking with the ebook retailer you generally use – whichever country you’re in. I’m pleased that Moth’s second full-length adventure will be available pretty widely, all over the world. I’m still trying to clarify the US situation, but hopefully I can find out what’s happening there soon.

In next week’s #MothMonday I’m going to be talking about the Boston setting, and why I decided to set both Falling to Ash and Hunting the Dark there. If you have any other questions in the meantime, do let me know and I’ll also answer them – whether it’s here or on Twitter or Facebook.

—
*I may end up missing Monday 22nd December due to Life Stuff**, but either I’ll just skip that one or will post another day during the week if I can.

**What is this Life Stuff you keep speaking of, Kaz? You might be able to guess – and it’s not really a big secret or anything, considering what I’ve talked about on Twitter over the past few months – but I just don’t want to jinx anything right now. Also, I try not to go on about personal stuff too much online. Do I always succeed? No. 😉

Aaaand… that’s a wrap! (Sorry this is a day late. Technical problems!)

So, that’s the end of NaNoWriMo – and the end of our #MiniNaNo – for another year. I am pleased to say that despite a couple of tough days last week, I more than made up for it by writing a lot at the weekend and finished with a very respectable…

20,000 words

Yay! 🙂 That is a very approximate word count as I wrote all of it longhand. However, if anything I am under-estimating so I feel pretty confident in saying I have at least 20K. Considering that my minimum goal for the month was 15K, I am very happy with where I ended up. It would have been awesome to write more, but with everything currently going on in Life I still think that 20,000 words (in longhand, too!) is something close to a miracle.

More important than the number of words, I actually like what I’ve written. Not the words themselves, in terms of craft – because most of them are very rough and sucky – but the story and characters seem to be working okay. I think there’s quite a lot of potential in the project, which is all I can really ask for at this stage. I’m looking forward to typing it all up (editing/adding/cutting as I go along) and really seeing what I have. It will hopefully be a good foundation to build on.

So, how did you get on this month? I hope you’re happy with whatever you’ve written – no matter how many words you produced, remember that just writing anything at all is an achievement!

I’ve enjoyed blogging each week throughout November, and am going to try my best to continue that in December. Look for Moth Mondays as we build toward the ebook publication of Hunting the Dark in January 2015. I’m sure I can find something Moth-related to ramble on about every Monday for a few weeks… 😉